Architectures of Possiblity

Advanced reader copies of Lance Olsen's fictioneering textbook, Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Fiction, will be available soon from Guide Dog Books. I helped edit and format the book and have an interview in it. It is an expanded revamp of Rebel Yell: A Short Guide to Fiction Writing, published in the late 1990s; I have used this first edition for years in short story writing courses. The new, updated edition contains lots of new material and will debut in 2012 at the annual AWP convention. Lance and I will both be there. Here's the cover description:

"Ideal for individual or classroom use, Architectures of Possibility theorizes and questions the often unconscious assumptions behind such traditional writing gestures as temporality, scene, and characterization; offers various suggestions for generating writing that resists, rethinks, and/or expands the very notion of narrativity; visits a number of important concerns/trends/obsessions in current writing (both on the page and off); discusses marketplace (ir)realities; hones critical reading and manuscript editing capabilities; and strengthens problem-solving muscles from brainstorming to literary activism.

Exercises and supplemental reading lists challenge authors to push their work into self-aware and surprising territory.

Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing, including the novelsCalendar of Regrets, Head in Flames, and Nietzsche’s Kisses. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. He serves as chair of FC2’s Board of Directors and teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.

Collaborator Trevor Dodge is author of the novel Yellow #10 and short-fiction collection Everyone I know Lives on Roads, as well as co-editor of the Northwest Edge anthologies of experimental narrative. He teaches writing, literature, comics, and games studies at Clackamas Community College in Oregon Cityand the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland."

About Me

I'm a novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher, SF critic, playwright and English prof. I am the author of over twenty works or fiction and nonfiction, most recently a 2-volume ficiton collection, BATTLE WITHOUT HONOR OR HUMANITY; a biocritical study of the life and work of J.G. Ballard; a trilogy of one-acts, THREE PLAYS; and a cultography on John Carpenter's film THEY LIVE.